


Good Man in a Storm

by lizimajig



Category: Doctor Who, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3279710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/pseuds/lizimajig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"New York City," the Doctor announced grandly, arms thrust wide. "City of about eight million people. Not as many as were in Paris in your time, mind, although I expect that 1832 Paris's population is... ah, a bit more dense. What do you think?"</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"My trousers itch."</i></p><p> </p><p>The night of June 4, Grantaire stumbles into what he thinks is the wine shop and wakes up in the TARDIS. On the morning of June 5, he comes back a changed man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Man in a Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinkatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/gifts).



> So, once upon a time there was [this photoset on Tumblr](http://barricadeur.tumblr.com/post/44027341066/les-miserables-au-doctor-who-crossover) and then I wrote this fic for thinkatory's birthday. It's not super shippy, but it's there. Oh E/R, will you ever stop hurting me so much? No? Okay.

A great cacophony tore Grantaire from his unconscious state, which he immediately regretted because the light was blinding, worse than staring into the sun at midday. "My God," he sighed, pressing the heels of his hand into his aching eyes. "Please tell me the revolution has not started already."

"The what? Oh my," an unfamiliar voice said, oddly accented, and Grantaire had the suspicious feeling this was not the wine shop nor the building where he took lodgings, when he managed to make it there. "I didn't see you there. When did you get in? I thought I locked the doors."

Against his better judgment, but needing to see to whom he was speaking, Grantaire looked up, squinting against the light for the moment. The man was young, but on a second glance, old. His hair parted to one side, although he went without waistcoat and his jacket was unfashionably loose. All in all, he looked a strange fellow. Maybe he was Prussian. "I thought this was the wine shop."

"Wine? Heavens, no. Can't stand the stuff," he replied conversationally, offering his hand, which Grantaire accepted and was helped to his feet. "Keep a bottle or two around, just in case. The missus drops in on me now and then and she likes it and then -- well." The grin on his face told the story of what happened next well enough. "What's your name, then?"

"Grantaire," he said, taken aback by the speed at which this stranger moved, not physically but obviously mentally, jumping from one thing to the next. "Who are you and -- what is all this?"

"Oh, I'm the Doctor, lovely to meet you," he said cheerfully, and immediately abandoned him to run back to the center... table? He wasn't sure what one might call it, except when the Doctor pulled a lever, the room shuddered and he reached for something to grab onto lest he fall. Clearly, it controlled... whatever this was.

"Are you a physician?" he called over the groan of heavy machinery.

"What? Well, yes. And no." That was no sort of answer at all. "I still don't know how you got in -- although I expect the old girl knows what she's doing. She can always tell these things," he said in an admiring tone, and patting some kind of window of readings with fondness. 

"Tell what?" he asked.

"Well who needs to come on board, of course," he said, as though it should have been obvious. "And what's this revolution I hear about? There were rumblings in Paris, but I try to avoid the big events if I can. Fixed points and all."

"I haven't the damnedest idea of what you're talking about," Grantaire answered, annoyed and in need of a drink. 

He threw another lever and turned to Grantaire. "Come to the twentieth century with me!"

He scoffed, but there was a light in his eye, wicked and smiling and determined. He knew that look from another man, and loved it in him. It weakened his resolve, and his anger dissolved. "If I can get a drink, I can't say that I care," he replied, nonchalantly. 

The Doctor's grin widened, and he leaned in closer. "Geronimo," he whispered. 

\---

He didn't know what he'd been expecting from the twentieth century, but this certainly had not entered his mind. He'd been to some of the most densely populated areas of Paris, where families lived in one room and multiple families in a single building, but the number of people in his sight were innumerable, walking here and there, and driving in things called cars and riding in large buses, more people than he could count as they came to a stop at the water, where a railing separated them from the water where even more people were carried by boats. "Where did we say we were?"

"New York City," the Doctor announced grandly, arms thrust wide. "City of about eight million people. Not as many as were in Paris in your time, mind, although I expect that 1832 Paris's population is... ah, a bit more dense. What do you think?"

"My trousers itch." The denim was uncomfortable, although he had changed upon the Doctor's insistence that he not attract so much attention and under the assurance that he would look "cool," whatever that meant. 

"That's the spirit!" he answered, and Grantaire wondered if he'd heard him at all. "Humans, you just keep growing and expanding and... more! One day you'll head beyond this planet, to the moon, to stars, and planets beyond anything anyone could ever imagine."

The grandiosity of it threatened to overwhelm him. "And you've visited them all? Humans at every point in the universe?"

"Lots of them. Can't seem to help myself."

"Are you human?"

"Good heavens, no, no. Time Lords aren't humans. And before you start, I don't look human, _you_ all look Time Lord, we were here first, you know."

"And where do you come from? Some place, out beyond the stars?"

For the first time, he saw a pause in the Doctor's whirlwind demeanor. "Further than that," he said.

"Then we truly are a mere spark in time, and an insignificant spit of dirt in the universe." As he had always suspected.

The Doctor canted his head to one side. "Now what makes you say that?"

As one who was famous for believing in nothing save for liquor, Grantaire was not used to fielding questions. "If we are in one moment in what you say is millions upon millions of moments, and just one planet in a corner of the entirety of the universe, and that which we believe to be quite large is quite small," he completed, "I find it hard to believe that I am anything but justified in believing we are nothing at all."

"Then you listen here, Grantaire. I have been from one end of the universe to the other and I have never seen a something that would qualify as nothing." He folded his arms. "In fact, it's more to my experience that what _you_ might consider these little nothings inevitably add up to something bigger than you would expect." 

"Doctor, your conviction is admirable but groundless." He resisted the pull deep in his stomach that wanted it to be true, when his own eyes had seen the reality of it. "You sound like my friends who would make a revolution out of dust and their own willpower."

"You, Grantaire, are a man of contradictions." Whereas most people would have sounded exasperated at that, the Doctor sounded pleased. He then clapped his hands and said, "Well, enough lollygagging in New York. I think it's time for a real trip. Come along, R!"

\---

Grantaire was unsure of what the Doctor expected in a traveling companion, and so did what he was asked, as he was able. Don't touch that, don't wander off, _do not_ eat that, hold this, let me do the talking. That one had not gone over so well. 

Once they'd stopped running from the fallout of that one, the Doctor turned to Grantaire and demanded, "What is this, the second coming of Brian Pond? Why do you do everything I say?"

"You told me to!" he cried in response.

"And do you always do what you're told?" The Doctor thumped him on the forehead with his screwdriver. "Stop doing that, I've never traveled with someone who does what I ask and no point in starting now. Ah." Their pursuers were catching up with them. "Except this time. Run."

With the Doctor's hand around his, they ran, so fast that Grantaire's legs screaming in protest and his lungs burned. The elation of freedom that came from a run of such speed and length hit him like a wall, and he laughed. He could see the Doctor smile too, and for a moment it was only them, and the running.

They hit the TARDIS going at full speed, and the door snapped shut behind them. The mob on the other side knocked angrily, and the Doctor laughed. He did that a lot, Grantaire noticed.

"In the name of the Emperor, I charge you to open the doors this instant!" one voice rang over all the rest.

"Ha! In the name of the Doctor, I charge _him_ to open _his_ doors!" he yelled back. "That sounded better in my head," he confided to Grantaire.

"His Imperial Highness Rexantimorfians commands you to open this door!"

"I know something of Emperors!" Grantaire returned, exhilarated. "I know their power derives from forcing others to abdicate their own!" He sounded like Enjolras. 

The Doctor grinned, and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. "That was good," he whispered.

"Was it not bombastic?" he asked, laughing.

"Oh, no. Well, a bit, but we can use a little bombast from time to time," he said, and jumped at the enormous bang on the door. 

"Are you sure they cannot get in?" he then questioned.

"Safe as houses," the Doctor assured him.

"Fetch a torch!" one voice roared.

"Fetch axes!" another added.

"Time to go," the Doctor said decisively. "Oh, look! Coordinates. I do love when the old girl knows where she's going," he said, setting his switches and levers.

"This travels in the void of space, would she not stand against fire and blades?" Grantaire asked.

"Well, I would expect so, but I'd rather not test the theory," he said, and threw the switch that sent them hurtling into space and time. The angry crowd outside disappeared, replaced by the wheezing of the engine all around them.

They came to a somewhat abrupt halt not all that much later, and were immediately rocked when something large and likely explosive hit them. Before either of them could react, the door was pulled open and a women strode in. "Took you long enough! What kind of a time traveler is late, honestly."

"One who didn't get the right coordinates, why are they shooting at you?" the Doctor asked, as though one thought was connected to the other. 

"Oh it was only a misunderstanding, sweetie, you know how things can go. Hello, who are you?" The woman had strode up to the console with all the confidence of someone who was walking into their own home.

"River, meet Grantaire. I picked him up in Paris, sometime. I don't remember. 1940?" The Doctor waved it off. "Grantaire, this is my wife, River Song."

"1832," he corrected, and bowed to the Doctor's wife. "Madame."

"Ooh, I do love a Frenchman. Or two," she said with a playful smirk. Grantaire thought he was going to like this River Song woman. "Now, we really should be on our way, sweetie, before these fellows pull out the big guns."

The Doctor shook his head, but Grantaire could see that he was trying not to smile underneath it all. He threw the lever, and again they were off with a wheeze and the rumbling of engines.

\---

If traveling with the Doctor was an adventure, traveling with his wife was a completely different matter altogether. He needn't have worried about feeling pushed out of place, or as though he were the third wheel. As enamored as the Doctor and River obviously were with one another, they were just as involved with their guest. They were clever, and it seemed to Grantaire that between the two of them there was nothing they didn't know or couldn't do.

But there were times when he missed his friends. The Doctor smiled, either from amusement or out of hope, and he would remember the same smile gracing Joly's lips. River was capable of quick action, but had the same shrewd judgment he's always seen in Combeferre. But it was never quite so obvious and painful as it was when he saw Enjolras in the Doctor.

He was wonderful, yes. He believed in the best of people, and pushed for that. He wanted freedom and the best for everyone they met, and could light that fire even in Grantaire. But at the same time he could be terrible; cruel and merciless to those who earned his wrath. 

Back on the TARDIS the Doctor left him and River to tinker under the console. He followed her lead by leaving him be, sitting in the walkway and watching him through the platform's glass floor with a bottle of wine.

"How does that always hurt the most," he wondered under his breath as he took a swig from the bottle.

Though he hadn't meant for River, just by him, to hear, she had. "I think it has something to do with seeing someone you love hurt. No, not hurt, disappointed," she corrected herself. Her voice sounded far away and distracted, as though she were not even talking to him. "That's what it is. The disappointment, the let down when you can't rise to his standards." 

"Or won't?" he asked wryly.

"Or won't," she agreed, and turned to study him carefully. She did not exactly give the impression she could see through you the way the Doctor did, but it was similar. More like instead of reading every sin and vice written on your soul she only saw one, and understood it deeply. "He hopes so much and so entirely, he's liable to be crushed every now and then."

"And so to avoid being so he becomes the one who crushes," he completed.

"Sometimes." Surprisingly, she smiled a bit at him, and stole the wine back. "I think you know a thing or two about disappointing the one you love."

Grantaire cringed. Love, belief, freedom, none of these things could be touched and seemed more and more ephemeral the more he tried to grasp them, and so he had long given up trying. Freedom was a lie told to convince people they could have this choice or that -- and maybe you could, if you were rich. He had no memory of ever believing in anything but the next bottle and the company of his friends. And love? Surely if he loved anyone in the universe it was Enjolras, for all the good it did either of them.

"I suppose that I do," he admitted, mired in his own thoughts. "And you? Do you ever disappoint the Doctor?"

Her smile turned sad. "I try not to," she said. "And I spent much time being concerned about earning his love, before I realized love is not earned. It's a gift. Your love is a gift you give, and they theirs."

"A gift," he murmured. That he was not so certain of as she seemed to be, but neither did he seek an argument.

The engines whirred around them, and River handed him the wine back. "I think it's time for me to depart," she said idly.

"So soon?" He'd lost track of time completely, in truth, but would have hated for her to go at any time. "The Doctor will surely hate to see you go."

"Hm, yes, I daresay he will." The mischief was back in her eyes and in the smirk on her lips. "He knows that he will see me again, and sooner than he thinks, likely. And I do so look forward to the next time, always."

"Will you ever come stay with the Doctor with a mind to stay?" he asked. "Permanently, I mean?"

River appeared as though she had never considered it before. "I suppose that I could," she said, "but where would be the fun in that? No, I don't think so. We'd both be bored. Oh, I would worry, if he were alone." She glanced back at him, her smile faded again. "As long as he isn't alone, all will be well." 

\---

River left. Not immediately, but perhaps a week later. "Enough time bunking off. I've got a dissertation to write."

"Well. Should you need a quiet place to work..." the Doctor started.

"I'll stay in the library," she said, smirking, and kissing him quickly, stopping for a moment as the Doctor embraced her tightly. Grantaire knew they had said more personal goodbyes last night, it was the only reason he could think he was left alone for the first time since embarking on this journey.

River kissed him on both cheeks and squeezed his hands. "Remember," she said, "a gift."

"A gift," he agreed, and that was their goodbye.

The days after she departed were unusually quiet. Which is to say that the Doctor still talked plenty, but little of it required replies from Grantaire, which was fine by him. He was in his own mind, unhappy there but no happier out of it. He thought more on his friends, and their hope to change hearts and minds. He wondered if they would be so frustrated and met with such resistance, as he'd always warned they would be. 

One day as they stood around the control panel, the Doctor nattered on and paused, waiting for some sort of acknowledgement from Grantaire. He was usually so good with picking up cues. "R?"

"What do you know of their fate?" he asked, a sudden change in subject.

"Sorry?" The Doctor had either truly not heard or understood, or he was better at pretending he hadn't than Grantaire had originally thought.

"My friends. What do you know of their fate?" he repeated.

The Doctor had stopped in his tracks, and didn't look up from the console, a dead giveaway. "Nothing," he said, with a note of finality, but he was unwilling to accept that.

"All of time and space at your fingers and you know nothing of them?" 

"Only what you've said," he replied, and finally looked up. It was the look of a liar desperate to not be found out. "Nothing else."

"You're a dismal liar, Doctor," he said plainly.

"Even if -- " The Doctor pushed his fingers through his hair and made a noise of frustration. "Even if there were something I knew, theoretically -- "

" -- which there is -- "

"Theoretically," he repeated, "I couldn't tell you. Knowledge of your own future, it's... a dangerous thing to have, take it from me."

"It's not my future I wish to know, but theirs."

"It's the same thing!" 

"It's not! I'm here, they're back in our own time, facing some very tall odds. Doctor," he nearly begged, walking around the console to his side, and he looked up at him. "I should very much like to have been proven wrong in this instance." His silence persisted. "I'm not," he guessed.

"Grantaire -- "

"I was right. Their revolution has failed and now the state has seen them all dead and forgotten." The horrified look on the Doctor's face told him all he needed to know without a word. The sudden onslaught of grief would not let him say more. 

To his credit (or maybe not, depending on what was about to leave his mouth), the Doctor was quiet as he looked for what to say. "R -- "

"We must change it," he decided.

"Now wait -- "

"You have said it yourself, time and again, that one person may change the outcome. We are two!"

"It's not that simple."

"It is! You do it all the time! How many times alone since I have come on this journey? How many more before and how many more to come?"

"Influencing an outcome is different than trying to change it," the Doctor said firmly; as far as Grantaire was concerned at that moment it was a fine distinction. "If you change one thing, who knows how many you may change down the line? It can result in catastrophe, bigger battles, worse tyrants in power -- "

"Ensuring equality for all men would lead to worse?" Some part of him knew the Doctor may be right, he had seen enough strange things in his time to know the Doctor saw beyond what a normal person may, but there was so much more of him that fought against it. "I call you not only liar, but coward."

There was no fight in the Doctor then. Just the look of a very old man who had seen much, perhaps too much, on the face of a deceptively young countenance. "And you are right," he said, "but I think perhaps knowledge of the end has made me so."

"I don't understand," he replied.

"No," the Doctor agreed, "and I don't think you will."

They were at an impasse. "Then take me home."

"Grantaire," he started, steel in his tone. He interrupted.

"Take me home, Doctor."

The look on his face was imperceptible and perfectly unreadable. He wondered for a moment if he was about to feel the same wrath he had seen before, but there was none in his face. He instead turned away, set coordinates. "One more adventure," he said before pulling the lever.

\---

Another adventure. One more trip around the universe, and then it would be home to Paris, with its narrow streets, back alley cafes, and all the faces he knew and gifted with his love, and was lucky enough to receive their gift in return. 

The tension drained from the both of them. Grantaire embraced his newfound resolve, no matter how terrifying it was at its core, and the Doctor was once again the exuberant man he had first met, running and shouting in amazement and laughing. He'd never met anyone who laughed like the Doctor.

But when it ended, all that was left of the laughter was the echo off the warm walls of the control room. "Are you -- "

"I am certain," Grantaire said, anticipating the question. "You've taught me, Doctor, what my friends could not. And whatever their fate, if I were not there to share it, I should forfeit their love for all time."

"Ah, Grantaire, a good man in a storm, even when you try not to be." The Doctor was smiling that incredibly sad smile again, but there was a hint of pride in it as well. "One man will make all the difference, especially one such as you."

Even if he did not believe the words as he said them, they were nice to hear. "Thank you."

The Doctor embraced him quickly, so fiercely that Grantaire was afraid that he might crack a rib. "Brave heart, R," he wished him, and then released him.

For a moment, he was afraid to leave the safety of these walls, for the chaos that lay outside and the fate before him. _Brave heart._ His heart had never been brave, not before that moment, and the growing pain was sharp and sudden. He breathed, opened the door, and stepped out.


End file.
